[Prime Choice]

If they shut down the economy, it can cost lives in the long run,

Bah. The economy functioned just fine before the Internet. Even today with all our electronic transactions, if it all went offline, business would fare just fine on paper for days if not weeks. So I don't buy the claim that it would cost lives in any stretch of time. Again, this crap doesn't evoke a sense of terror; in evokes a sense of annoyance.

But still, the implicaions of hijacking the servers of FEMA should make us a little nervous on its own marits.

Why? Haven't you noticed how the NOAA, NASA, GAO, and a host of other .gov servers have long been the happy haunts of many an anklebiting scriptkiddy? Hell, even the .mil servers which answer to the Department of Defense have more than their fair share of break-ins on a regular basis.

FEMA getting 0wn3d is nothing new. This sort of nonsense has been going on since the 1980s.

[blogbat]

I would agree, "getting 0wn3d" has become nothing new at all.

Government officials are apparently saying this one is a big deal. It would be good to get more of the details about the whys, the wheres and the whens, though. The question are:

1. As a couple have accurately already pointed out: Why didn't we notice all of the e-commerce sites going down at some point?

2. Specifically, what day and during which hours did this happen- and in what order?

3. What was the exact nature of the attacks on the outside web servers -the details on the type of the attack on the DMAT network would also be nice

4. Why, in specifics, is this that much different from other incidents like it